Case 1:22-cv-01564-BAH Document 24 Filed 08/18/23 Page 7 of 15
Plaintiff attempts to complicate the issues presented by devoting a substantial portion of his briefing to the viability of various legal theories under which a copyright in the computer’s work would transfer to him, as the computer’s owner; for example, by operation of common law property principles or the work-for-hire doctrine. See Pl.’s Mem. at 31–37; Pl.’s Reply Supp. Mot. Summ. J. & Opp’n Def.’s Cross-Mot. Summ. J. (“Pl.’s Opp’n”) at 11–15, ECF No. 18. These arguments concern to whom a valid copyright should have been registered, and in so doing put the cart before the horse.[1] By denying registration, the Register concluded that no valid copyright had ever existed in a work generated absent human involvement, leaving nothing at all to register and thus no question as to whom that registration belonged.
The only question properly presented, then, is whether the Register acted arbitrarily or capriciously or otherwise in violation of the APA in reaching that conclusion. The Register did not err in denying the copyright registration application presented by plaintiff. United States copyright law protects only works of human creation.
Plaintiff correctly observes that throughout its long history, copyright law has proven malleable enough to cover works created with or involving technologies developed long after traditional media of writings memorialized on paper. See, e.g., Goldstein v. California, 412 U.S. 546, 561 (1973) (explaining that the constitutional scope of Congress’s power to “protect the ‘Writings’ of ‘Authors’” is “broad,” such that “writings” is not “limited to script or printed material,” but rather encompasses “any physical rendering of the fruits of creative intellectual or aesthetic labor”); Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884) (upholding
- ↑ In pursuing these arguments, plaintiff elaborates on his development, use, ownership, and prompting of the AI generating software in the so-called “Creativity Machine,” implying a level of human involvement in this case entirely absent in the administrative record. As detailed, supra, in Part I, plaintiff consistently represented to the Register that the AI system generated the work “autonomously” and that he played no role in its creation, see Application at 2, and judicial review of the Register’s final decision must be based on those same facts.
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